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Saturday, 12 January 2013

Rape, the Law and the Middle Class

Rape,
the Law and the Middle Class

Walter
Fernandes

The trauma of the Delhi woman who was raped has
ended with her death. The atrocity roused middle class anger all over the
country. Emotions ran high around this atrocious act of some drunken men and
the demonstrators made demands such as death penalty for rape and castration in
public. This outburst is understandable given the cruelty of the perpetrators
of the crime. However, one can ask whether this will become one more case of
reacting to a single case without taking cognizance of the malaise that leads
to such crimes. It became a high profile case because it happened in Delhi.
That does not reduce the atrocity of the crime. But for change to occur in
favour of women one has to go beyond this single case and deal with the issues
involved. One has to remember that what happened in Delhi is not an exception.
It received publicity because it happened in the capital but many more cases are
hushed up regularly or are not reported. According to police records during
2011 India witnessed 228,650 crimes against women, 24,206 of them of rape and
35,565 of kidnapping and abduction.

These are reported cases. Probably a much bigger
number goes unreported because of the stigma attached to it. Secondly,
according to police records around 90 percent of rapes are committed by persons
known to the victim, most of them family members. Thirdly, a large number of
victims belong to voiceless communities. For example, in an article in
Counter-currents, Cynthia Stephen quotes a dalit girl from a village in Tamil
Nadu as saying“ there is no girl
in our lane who has not been coerced or raped by the dominant caste men when
they go to the fields to fetch water or for work.” Men from the dominant castes
threaten the dalits with dire consequences if they dare complain to the police.
So these cases go unreported. Finally, often the police add to the trauma. For
example, an 18 year old girl in Badhshapur village in Patiala committed suicide
on December 26, six weeks after being raped by three men. Her mother reports
that when she went to complain to the police they humiliated the girl with lewd
question such as “how did they touch your breast? Did they open their jeans or
coat first?” The criminals were arrested only after her suicide. Or take the
case of the police officer in Haryana who was elevated to the highest rank
though a budding tennis star had accused him of raping her. She too committed
suicide because she was unable to bear the harassment. The officer was given a six
month jail sentence some years after his retirement.

These and other cases are symbolic of the attitudes
of our society. The middle class stages demonstration in high profile cases and
ignores the rest. Also the so called national media do the same. For example,
when on December 23, 2005 some university students got into a railway
compartment at Kokrajhar not knowing that it was a military wagon. All of them
were raped by men paid to protect the citizens. But it did not become national
news. Even in Assam it remained a Bodo women’s issue, not of all women. In
other words, crimes against women are a result of the strong patriarchal values
of our society but are also conditioned by ethnic and caste attitudes and in
many cases by a false sense of patriotism. For example when the security forces
rape women people are told to protect their honour and not report those cases. The
victims do not matter. Even laws such as the Armed Forces Special Powers Act
protect such criminals in uniform.

Given these attitudes, one can ask whether new laws,
even death penalty, can prevent such crimes. One does not deny that police
reforms and strong laws are required. But they alone cannot solve the problems
that are deep rooted in our culture which is visible in actions such as a few
lakh female foetuses aborted every year because women are considered a burden. If
all rapists were to be hanged, the victims would have to lose some of their
family members who are perpetrators of these crimes. Moreover, the acceptance
of the value of male superiority by most women ensures that abuses are kept
secret often on the pretext of protecting the girl’s or family honour. Or take
the case of the tribal customary laws in the North East that give all social
power to men alone. The leaders refuse to change the laws. For example,
Nagaland has not been able to hold elections to the municipal councils because
of the tribal leaders’ opposition to 33 percent reservations for women. They
claim that their customary law does not allow women to have political power.

It is clear then, that laws cannot change this
system. Dowry, child labour, caste-based discrimination are banned by law. But
they cannot be implemented without changing the attitudes that give birth to
these abuses. It is as true about women’s status as about corruption, caste and
ethnic attitudes. No law can become effective without a social infrastructure
to support it. But the temptation of the middle class that leads the
demonstrations against rape, corruption and other abuses is to take up an event
in isolation and ignore the attitudes and the social systems that cause it. For
example, this class rightly took up political corruption as a cause to fight
against but very few of them asked whether the hands of those who protested are
clean. Similarly, this class also protested against the unjust arrest and
jailing of Dr Binayak Sen and that was required. But they did not question the
Sedition Act or the middle class needs for which the tribals are displaced. Their
impoverishment is at the root of the Maoist rebellion in Central India.

One needs to ensure that also the issue of rape does
not end with one case. The gender, class and caste attitudes that cause such
abuses have to be tackled. One cannot stop at condemning the politician and the
police departments. That step is required but new laws can only give one peace
of conscience and cannot solve the problem. One has to look inwards and examine
the social and cultural values that are behind such crimes. If the Delhi rape
case leads to such self-examination, the 23 year old para-medical will not have
laid down her life in vain.

The
author is a former director of North Eastern Social Research Centre, Guwahati.